


Excerpts From Letters Never Sent

by moony_julymoonlight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Death, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Letters, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, Psychological Trauma, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:14:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24183448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moony_julymoonlight/pseuds/moony_julymoonlight
Summary: It seems like she has always written letters that she can never send. Hermione-centric. Implied Harry x Hermione. Complete.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter
Comments: 6
Kudos: 42





	Excerpts From Letters Never Sent

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own these characters and claim no profit from this work. Credit where credit is due to Ms JK Rowling. 
> 
> This is something that came to my head when I came across this phrase in the Letters Home collection of Sylvia Plath: "And so it seems that I must always write you letters that I can never send." I was also inspired by Benedict Smith's I Wish I Wrote The Way I Thought.

**One**

_I don’t even know why I am writing this, I see no point, I see no logical reason for writing this but I still am and I suppose my relationship with you has always been one that cannot be explained by logic or rationality. I wonder what is the purpose of writing to you, it is not like you can read them, you won’t ever read them._

_I suppose I should start off by providing you with updates that have happened since you have been gone:_

  * _I found my parents and restored their memories. We cried so much that our bodies could no longer produce tears and we just sat there with tear tracts as I apologised again and again and they forgave me again and again ~~but once it became too much, I think they realised I was really trying to apologise to you but unlike them, you couldn't forgive me.  
~~_~~~~
  * _There are two days that are celebrated and commemorated now: Battle of Hogwarts Victory and Potter Day. I told them you would hate the second one but no one listened to me. I ~~don’t know why people are calling it a victory when we lost you  
~~_~~~~
  * _My parents have insisted I see a therapist. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them but they are similar to mind healers (not that you ever saw one despite me always thinking that you should have and isn’t it now too late for me to say that?). I cannot tell her anything about my life, of course, so we just focus on the emotional “upheavals” as he calls them. He told me to describe my feelings, the next day I turned up with charts, graphs and scales to describe them because I am never fully experiencing one emotion, it is a mixture of all of them. He found my method interesting and I walked him through the legends of my emotions and he thought it was very unique how I organise them like it is a filing cabinet ( ~~know what it means, I was considered unique even before I got my magic)  
~~_
  * _My therapist thinks writing to you may help me cope with the loss but I don’t see how it will because even the act of writing letters has my cowering in flashbacks and memories. ~~Sometimes, I think I will see a snowy owl and I will attach the letter with parcels of food and cake for you but then I remember you both are gone.~~_



_I also returned for my 7th year. I am one of the few students to do so. It is quite odd. I have never really feared for my life at Hogwarts and I can’t help but become lost in my visions from the war and I swear, I can see the castles in twos: the sanctuary and safe haven it once was and the cold fortress where evil was destroyed now. ~~I am wondering if this is what you felt like all these years? You always saw the dark side of the war even before the rest of us could.~~ _

_I pace inside my room all night, convinced we have overlooked something and it is not really over. But I suppose it is, isn’t it? If it weren’t, you’d still be here. I’d tell you more about Hogwarts but I don’t want to make you sad ~~it is not the way it was, it will never be the way it was.~~ _

_Sometimes, when I am in the library, I become so immersed that I almost forget that you aren’t here anymore. Ron comes to get me and we both look at each other with a grim sense of loss that only we can understand. ~~Is this how you felt when I was petrified, cursed by Doloholv, tortured in Malfoy Manor?~~ _

_I don't know how frequently I will write. I don’t know if I have it in me. My thoughts are so obsessively convoluted as I try to finish last year at Hogwarts. ~~It pains me whenever I hope I never have to see it again because I cannot walk the halls anymore, wondering if you will take off your cloak of invisibility and appear and this all was just a bad dream.~~ I am also spending so much time, researching Horcruxes and souls and trying to understand where you went wrong in your determination to head to the forest. _

_~~I also try to let go of my despair that you didn’t think to tell me before you did. Maybe I could have helpe-~~ It does not matter now. _

* * *

**Two**

_I know this won’t make sense but sometimes I stay up late, tossing and turning, staring up at the ceiling of my bedroom as I try to think of what to do. Not in terms of a career, oh no, I am working in the Ministry for the emancipation of various magical beings, it is gruelling and it is rewarding but I still don’t know what to do._

_I SHOULD NOT BE ALIVE._

_There. I said it and it is sad but I should not be alive. I shouldn’t. How did I get to be alive and so many other people are gone and you’re gone? We were best friends. You’re the first person I have loved and I know I am not the first for you. ~~I suppose Ron will always have that edge over me~~ but I am the one who told you that we are in this together and I foolishly believed in it all this time when you never did. ~~You went alone, you didn’t even remember that we’re in this together.~~ _

_When Ron left us in the tent, you told me you won’t ever leave me like that ~~but here we are.~~ You are gone and I am a pathetic excuse for what they call alive. I think some part of me left with you but not the most necessary part because it is anguishing to be here. I don’t want to be here. ~~I am sorry for all the times I nagged you about Sirius.~~ _

_I erased my parents’ memories because I was so sure that I would die and I didn’t want them to grieve. I figured it would be easier if I spared them from the loss of a child. Despite my belief that I will die, I did not. ~~and it is unfair~~ _

_My therapist told me I am experiencing survivor’s guilt which is a psychological condition. I added it into my lists of things to study and research. I suppose I can share it with you ~~why didn’t you tell me why didn’t you tell me why didn’t you tell me~~ _

  * _Survivor’s Guilt_


  * _Making Horcruxes of live beings_


  * _Effect of Horxruces on live beings' souls_



_I don’t want to write to you. I don’t think I can. It is too painful. ~~I think you remember that my boggart was failure and you being gone has been my biggest. I can see it in Ron’s eyes every time he looks at me.~~ _

* * *

**Three**

_My therapist thinks I am facing uncertainty because now, no one relies on my knowledge and intellect for sheer survival. A better life? Yes. Survival? No._

_I don’t know_ when _we came to rely on it for survival. Was the foundation set in first-year or the year on the run? I really don’t know except that now whenever I come across a foreign subject or concept, I cannot rest until I have completely studied it and understand it and then when I am done, I feel empty. What is the point? Nobody needs it, it is not a life or death situation even if I treat it like it is. I get assigned one task at work, spend anxious hours examining, studying, understanding and compiling the information and turn it in much sooner than expected. I think I am the only person who is berated for it._

_I was forcefully told to take my vacation days or I’d be fired which is just so terrible, I thought of going to see my parents but didn’t. I thought of every single person I could see but I had so many reasons to not go I ~~thought most of you and almost went to the forest looking for the ring before telling myself I am being illogical.~~ _

_I think it is because I feel it is my fault that you are gone, that maybe if I had studied a bit more, I could have saved you. So now, my brain treats everything like it is a matter of life and death ~~was that how it always was for you?~~ I cannot even understand how my one strength became my own weakness. _

_I go back to our year on the run a lot. I have a map where I traced our path ~~I nearly froze when I realised that if I tilted my head, it looked like a lightning bolt~~ and I set fire to it. I revisit the places again and again and hate myself for all the ways I failed you. I nearly let you get killed by the snake in Godric’s Hollow but I suppose that didn’t matter compared to the biggest way I failed you by not following you into the forest. ~~Why didn’t you take me to see the memories why did you think you are on your own, I stood by you for everything.~~ _

_Sometimes, when I am at work, I can almost hear you. Your laugh, gentle chiding for me to stop working, a tug to let go of my books. I jerk awake immediately, looking around for a flash of your messy hair or green eyes but there is no one except for me and the deafening sound of silence. You are not here, aren’t you? You no longer are._

* * *

**Four**

_It is the first-ever Potter Day. Cannot cope ~~(took the day off, closed my Floo Network, darkened the entire house, warded it more than it is already warded, cast sound blocking spells on my room and lay in bed the entire day, screaming.)~~ _

* * *

**Five**

_Ron and I had a fight, it was the most either of us felt like you’re still here. I could almost picture you during it. How you’d try to intervene or stand by silently as you let us cool off our steam. Sometimes, I think my most favourite part about fighting with Ron was the aftermath where I had you to myself for a few days afterwards. ~~The realization that it won’t happen this time hit me so severely that I crumpled onto the floor and stayed there until I saw the sun rays disappear.~~ _

_On account of the several books being written on your life, I got so many letters that I had to block my owl posts. I declined every single invitation to provide an interview while Ron decided to talk about you. I remark on our different upbringings here: he was the sixth child in a family where sharing was the perfect definition of love. I am an only child who considers having my own person as my definition of love. ~~Maybe that is why I liked fighting with Ron too - because I had you to myself afterwards.~~ _

_I picked myself up, went into my study and then spent hours looking at my memories of you in the Pensieve. I ~~t is not the same, it is not the same, it is not the same~~. I was trying to actually see what else I could have done. The memories of the war were so difficult that I forgot I was reviewing them and ducked down to avoid being hit by the spells. _

_I didn’t go for Christmas at the Burrow. It is a very sad affair now. They’ve lost two sons in their eyes and the loss is so profound, everyone is stifled in it. At least, Ron, has a family to cope with._

_You were my family in this world. ~~I was robbed of the chance to have you here and heal together.~~ We belonged together that year on the run when we both were orphans. My parents never met you properly but sometimes, I can feel the pain on their faces when they come across me sitting in bed writing to you. They think it hasn’t helped me move on. I don’t even know what those words mean. _

_My therapist thinks that I should acknowledge and feel everything. I shouldn’t despise myself for it but I just can’t describe it. Not enough words exist to describe it._

_I wish I could write to you properly. I wish I could perfectly transfer the inside of my mind onto the parchment to show you what is it like ~~is this how you felt when I badgered you about~~ _ ~~_Occlumency_ _I am sorry, I am so sorry._~~

* * *

**Six**

_There are four facts that I am going to discuss in this:_

  * _It has been a year since I started writing these. Sometimes, I wonder if I write these things down so they are finally expunged from my body and mind and I can never pretend or thought them. I think I have figured out what happened at the battle. Why you left. ~~I pretend I still don’t know because I don’t want to know now.  
  
~~_
  * _I wish I wrote the way I thought about you; obsessively and incessantly. I’d write myself into breakdowns. Words that spiral out like tentacles into abysmal nothing. I would be able to write to you more if I thought of it any less.  
  
_
  * _My thoughts are getting convoluted again. Nothing makes sense. I beg my mind to make it make sense but it has long turned against me.  
  
_
  * _I pace like a ghost at night. I see war. I see death. I think about fairytales and stories and how the heroes always died alone. You were alone. I feel alone. ~~Is this how you felt in the forest as you waited for him to strike the spell?~~_



_Ron and I reconciled again. We spent the night talking about you and it was almost enough to feel your presence again. ~~but you are not here, you will never be here again, everything is just my brain trying to move on~~. Sometimes, Ron and I look at each other in confusion. I turn to him, expecting your quiet observations, kindness and humour while he turns to me expecting loyalty, devotion and friendship. With horror, we realise that we both are trying to look for you in the other. ~~No one can be like you, there will never be anyone like you, I cannot find you in anyone anymore.~~_

* * *

**Seven**

_It has been a long time but I didn’t forget you ~~I would never forgive myself if I forgot you but I was so busy trying to lobby for bills at the Ministry.~~ I finally went to 12 Grimmauld Place. Due to the laws, your muggle relatives could not lay claim to it which made me so happy because if they had, I would have personally started a revolt. _

_My therapist thought it was a good idea. It would lead to some closure, he said._

_I did not use magic as I picked up your discarded clothes, dropped as if you had merely stepped out and would be back on your way soon. I inhaled them, there was no scent but I was looking so desperately that my brain deceived me into thinking I could smell you._

_With all your belongings neatly packed, I waited for closure. I don’t know if it ever came. I don’t think it did. Because_ _all I did was sit for hours as my mind was locked in memories. Of you. Of us. I remember the last time we were here and left, never knowing we would never return together ~~I cannot bear it if you did not know you’d never return when you set off for the forest because if you didn’t know, it means you kept many things in your heart to tell me later.~~ _

_I enter my Pensieve - it has only one memory now, one so deeply imprinted in my mind that I can recite it word to word. “Harry Potter,” you say and I enter the train compartment with my younger self. “Are you really? I know all about you, of course.”_

_I have placed all my letters on the shelf over the fireplace. Once I finish this, it will go to the collection too. I know you’re not reading them. I know that. All these messages are just out there, drifting in the darkness, into nothing...I don’t know where you are but I hope you are at peace. You deserve some peace._

_~~I am sorry for everything.~~ _

* * *

**Later**

“Oi, Hermione,” said Ron as he entered 12 Grimmauld Place. He swallowed nervously as he entered the house, the eerie silence causing a ringing in his ears. The house was completely cleared of any furniture or belongings - there were plans to turn it into a museum. Sending out multiple detection spells that returned empty, he shrugged. She must have already left for Diagon Alley. 

Turning, he was about to head out when he heard a faint rustle like leaves of parchment. He directed his wand light on the shelf over the fireplace but there was nothing. He tried not to shiver as he left, the place felt really creepy since Harry's death. 

Inside Grimmauld Place, a thick collection of unsent letters fluttered to the ground - no solid presence around to catch them. 


End file.
